You may not have realized it yet, but you have a strategy for everything you do. You have a strategy for how you read a book, travel and perform your job... and you have a buying strategy. Everyone has a buying strategy and they are not the same.
Think about when you bought an expensive item, say an automobile (your buying strategy is similar across the board). How did you go about looking for it? Did you get on the internet and do research on a number of cars? Or did you ask your friends or base your decision on what they had? Or perhaps you just went to the dealership to look at different options. Maybe it was a combination of a couple of these or others.
Did the decision on what you wanted have to do with what you wanted (American made, blue, SUV) or perhaps what you didn't want (ie. Japanese made, green, convertible)...or again a combination?
Did the auto you settle on have more to do with how it looked, how the sales rep presented it, or the feeling you got when you were test-driving it... or again a combination of one of these? If you look back over a few different car buys over you're life, you'll find that the buying strategy was very similar.
The bottom line is that people have different buying strategies. In order to effectively appeal to your target market, your marketing material needs to appeal to a number of different buying strategies. This means your copywriting needs to be directed toward those who make decisions on the own as well as those who need external sources (testimonials); folks who base their decisions on visual, kinesthetic, and audio leads; those who like options and those who prefer procedures as well as other criteria.
A good resource for compelling advertising for the different buying strategies that make up your target market is Shelle Rose Charvet's book Words that Change Minds. I encourage you to pick up a copy.
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